Paulianity, a sect of heretics, so called from their founder Paulus Samofatensis, a native of Samofata, elected bishop of Antioch in 262. His doctrine seems to have amounted to this: that the Son and the Holy Ghost exist in God in the same manner as the faculties of reason and activity do in man; that Christ was born a mere man; but that the reason or wisdom of the Father descended into him, and by him wrought miracles upon earth, and instructed the nations; and, finally, that, on account of this union of the Divine Word with the man Jesus, Christ might, though improperly, be called God. It is also said, that he did not baptize in the name of the Father and the Son, &c.; for which reason the council of Nice ordered those baptized by him to be re-baptized.

Being condemned by Dionysius Alexandrinus in a council, he abjured his errors, to avoid deposition; but soon after he resumed them, and was actually deposed by another council in 269.—He may be considered as the father of the modern Socinians; and his errors are severely condemned by the council of Nice, whose creed differs a little from that now used, under the same name, in the church of England. The creed agreed upon by the Nicaean fathers, with a view to the errors of Paulus Samofatensis, concludes thus:

"But those who say he was when he was not, and was not before he was born, the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes." To those who have any veneration for the council of Nice this must appear a very severe, and perhaps not unjust, censure of the modern Heteroiconians as well as of the Socinians.